Uncertain Grounds in Shawn Wong's Novel Homebase
Résumé
As one of the four co-editors of the famous Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers (1974), a book which led to the rediscovery of a whole field of literature left in limbo by the dominant white culture, Shawn Wong was definitely a precursor of Asian American studies. But his greatest contribution to this field is perhaps to be sought in his 1979 novel Homebase, a book which retraces the history of Chinese American immigration in truly poetic prose which has been given too little critical attention. Through a stylistic approach, this article explores the tensions and complexities of a text which depicts the homodiegetic narrator's relentless process of claiming America as his unquestionable homebase, yet constantly underlines dispersal and disjunction. By suggesting the dilution of clear landmarks and frontiers and problematizing the very concept of "home", the novel proves the militant act of reterritorialization to be arduous and ultimately indecisive. In a final analysis, this radical sense of in-betweenness perhaps best transpires in the author's aesthetic stance which favors uncertain and endlessly shifting formal grounds.
Domaines
Littératures
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